1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contact assembly, and more particularly to a contact assembly which is used for a circuit inspection of a semiconductor integrated circuit chip having electrodes (pads) and a liquid crystal device, and used in a socket for a CSP (Chip Size Package) on which circuit terminals are arranged in a lattice shape. The present invention also relates to a retaining structure for retaining highly-accurate position of contacts. The present invention further relates to an LSI (Large-scale integrated) chip inspecting device and a circuit inspecting device of the CSP or the like using the above contact assembly and the contact retaining structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
A contact assembly of a prior art is disclosed in FIG. 3 of Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-296295. The contact assembly of the prior art includes plural contacts, which have a thin plate shape and input and output parts. An elastic deforming part (a curved part), which is elastically deformed by an external force, is formed between the input part and the output part of each contact. In order to cope with narrow-pitched arrangement of chip pads mounted on a wafer, the contacts are arranged with a predetermined angle without interference therebetween, with respect to an X-axis of the arrangement of terminals mounted on XY perpendicular coordinates (hereinafter, this arrangement structure will be called the contact assembly).
In general, in order to determine and retain accurate position of the contacts in, e.g., a connector, connecting parts (which are typically called a terminal) are forcibly inserted through supporting holes formed at a rigid body. However, it is difficult to form the supporting holes at the rigid body which is generally manufactured by a molding, corresponding to the narrow-pitch arrangement.
The above contact assembly of the prior art is disclosed in FIG. 29 (FIG. 5 of Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2002-296295). FIG. 29 is a front view showing the prior art contact assembly retaining instrument. As shown in the drawing, contacts 1 are supported by a sheet-shaped body 27 in such a manner that output terminals 6 of the contacts 1 are inserted through supporting holes formed at the body 27. And, input terminals 5 of the contacts 1 are inserted through guide holes formed at a guide sheet 28 which is located on the contacts 1. The above components are fixed by connecting posts 25 and supporting posts 26, so as to electrically connect an electronic device to be tested to an inspecting circuit board. However, such a supporting structure of the contact assembly is of no practical use.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a contact assembly and an LSI chip inspecting device using the same capable of retaining highly accurate position of contacts of a contact assembly, which are arranged in parallel with each other without interference and arranged with a predetermined angle with respect to an X-axis of arrangement of terminals mounted on XY perpendicular coordinates.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a contact assembly and LSI chip inspecting device using the same, an assembling process of which can be facilitated.